John C Lilly

Floating, Float Tanks & Flotation Therapy were developed from the early work of Dr. John Lilly who was a neurophysiologist and psychoanalyst. In 1954 he conducted research into how the brain would react when it was denied external stimulation.

John Lilly Quotes

I believe in our culture we need certain socially accepted places where we don’t answer the telephone, we don’t have to answer questions or agree with anyone on anything

— John C Lilly

All the average person has to do is to get into the tank in the darkness and silence and float around until he realizes he is programming everything that is happening inside his head. You are free of the physical world at that point and anything can happen inside your head because everything is governed by the laws of thought rather than the laws of the external world. So you can go to the limits of your conceptions.

— John C Lilly

John C Lilly

What is true in the province of the mind

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true, is true or becomes true, within certain limits. to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits... In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits.

The Human Biocomputer (1974)

If you get into these spaces at all, you must forget about them when you come back. You must forget you're omnipotent and omniscient and take the game seriously so you'll engage in sex, have children, and participate in the whole human scenario. When you come back from a deep tank session — or a coma or psychosis —there's always this extraterrestrial feeling. You have to read the directions in the glove compartment so you can run the human vehicle once more.

Tanks for the Memories : Floatation Tank Talks (1995)

John Lilly

At the highest level of satori from which people return, the point of consciousness becomes a surface or a solid which extends throughout the whole known universe. This used to be called fusion with the Universal Mind or God. In more modern terms you have done a mathematical transformation in which your centre of consciousness has ceased to be a travelling point and has become a surface or solid of consciousness... It was in this state that I experienced "myself" as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was distributed acround the galaxy. A "membrane".

"There were those who thought he was brilliant, and there were those who just thought he was insane. I, of course, thought he was a little bit of both," said Jennifer Yankee Caulfield, who worked on a Lilly-led project in the early 1980s to teach dolphins a computer-synthesized language.

Lilly, John C. 1956. "Effects of Physical Restraint and of Reduction of Ordinary Levels of Physical Stimuli on Intact Healthy Persons." 13-20 & 44, in Illustrative Strategies for Research on Psychopathology in Mental Health, Symposium No. 2. Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. New York. P. 47

Lilly, John C. 1957. "True Primary Emotional State of Anxiety-Terror-Panic in Contrast to a 'Sham' Emotion or 'Pseudo-Affective' State Evoked by Stimulation of the Hypothalamus" (Abstract). Fed. Proc. 16:81

Lilly, John C. 1962. "The 'Talking' Dolphins" in The Book of Knowledge Annual. Society of Canada Limited, Grolier, Inc. (This article was updated in the 1969 Yearbook covering the year 1968, pp. 8-15.)

Lilly, John C. 1966. "The Need for an Adequate Model of the Human End of the Interspecies Communication Program." IEEE Military Electronics Conference (MIL-E-CON 9), on Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Wash., DC. 1965. IEEE Spectrum 3, no. 3: P. 159-160

Lilly, John C. 1966. "Sound Production in Tursiops truncatus (Bottlenose Dolphin)." Conference on Sound Production in Man: Section on Phonation: Control and Speech Communication, New York Acad. of Sciences. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1968

Lilly, John C. 1967. Dolphin's Mimicry as a Unique Ability and a Step Towards Understanding in Research in Verbal Behavior and Some Neurophysiological Implications. Kurt Salzinger and Suzanne Salzinger, Eds. Conference on Verbal Behavior, N.Y.C. 1965. Academic Press, New York City. P. 21-27

Lilly, John C. 1967. Basic Problems in Education for Responsibility Caused by LSD-25. Proc. of 17th Conf. on Science, Philosophy and Religion in their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life. Clarence H. Fause, Ed. Paper presented in section on Character Education of Scientists, Engineers and Practitioners in Medicine Psychiatry and Science with Strategies for Change. Loyola Univ., Chicago, Ill. 1966